abrightboy | The Lengths That I Would Go To

The killer was moving around the country. Malcolm Bright could see the pattern, but he wasn't working for the FBI these days and they weren't exactly taking his calls. Short sighted of them, but they did fire him on suspicion of being crazy. The NYPD's jurisdiction was New York. With the killer beyond its borders, they handed it upwards and left it at that.

Let it go, Bright, had been Gil's sage advice. You can't catch every killer in America single-handedly.

Challenge accepted, some part of him retorted, though he'd only nodded mutely and forced a smile. Gil knew he hadn't simply let it go, but he wasn't going to have him followed to stop him doing anything stupid, either. He didn't have the will or the resources to keep tabs on Malcolm Bright 24/7 and Malcolm Bright knew it.

His mother, on the other hand, had extensive resources, so he simply didn't tell her he was leaving town. He did arrange for Ainsley to feed his bird, so the truth would come out eventually, but he'd be several states away by then.

He rode the bus. There was something oddly comforting about the anonymity of being in a crowd of strangers who had no interest in him whatsoever. He stared out the window and watched the country go by. When he stepped off the Greyhound in Lexington, Kentucky, he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in, then headed straight to the US Marshals office. There was no point in trying to talk to the FBI. If he was going to stop a killer from killing again, he needed someone in law enforcement to listen to him. The pattern suggested the next murder would happen in one of the rural communities around Lexington and it would be precipitated by a young woman's disappearance. He needed law enforcement with local knowledge, specifically.

He wandered into the Marshals' offices in a tidy three piece suit, charcoal grey with a burgundy tie perfectly knotted at his collar. He got a few suspicious sidelong glances but nobody asked if they could help him. He cleared his throat.

"Um, hello? I'm wondering if there's anyone here I can talk to about murder." He held up his hands. "Stopping murder, specifically, not... like... smalltalk."

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From:

abrightboy

Malcolm raised a finger. "He's an orphan? So he's spent his life searching for a father figure. This whole mentor thing makes even more sense now. He's found someone who encourages his interests; nurtures them, even. It's not even about his friends rejecting his lifestyle as much as it's his search for a family. Depending on who this mentor of his is, if he knows Quarles' background... well, a 'fixer' with no qualms about violence and desperate to please you would come in pretty handy if you're stuck in prison, wouldn't it?"

From:

tinstar

Raylan nodded again with a faint lift of his eyebrows, eyes busy with another 3 files as Malcolm talks.

"It certainly would, if you had the mind to use it. Love is a powerful drug. Acceptance is a close second and I'm sure some of these sickos would eat something like that up like Christmas dinner." He hated how ordinary and routine that line of thinking was but he'd long set aside his daydreams of what ought to be.

"It's hard not to know what goes on if you've got a lick of sense about you. Pretty sure you could watch his climb in Sol's rank in the newspapers here, if ya looked hard enough."

From:

abrightboy

"I wonder how long he's realized he had these... interests," Malcolm remarked idly. "I wonder how long it took him to give into those urges; whether it started with an accident or a coincidence that pushed him to escalate or if his violent appetites sent him pursuing them aggressively on his own. Because usu..."

The door buzzed.

"Oh." The food. "One second." He headed out the door and down the stairs, paying for the food and bringing it back up and making a space among the files.

"Steak, baked potato, steamed broccoli," Malcolm told him, setting the container in front of Raylan. He turned and opened a drawer, picking up a set of cutlery, wrapped in a linen napkin, held together with a brass napkin ring and held it out to Raylan.

From:

tinstar

He could already tell the conversation was going to continue over dinner; it was lucky his iron stomach was well proven. It wasn't the first time he'd poured over distasteful subjects while he ate tasty things and it wouldn't be the last.

While Malcolm fetched the food, Raylan started the clearing process, opening up a wide bit between them for it all to fit.

"Thank you," he said, eagerly breaking into the container and putting the lid under the plate itself and smirking a little at the neat bundle of silverware that Malcolm was handing him. "You keep 'em prewrapped? This got a knife worth a damn?"

From:

abrightboy

Malcolm held up a finger and reached for a block full of knives, grabbing one from along the side and flipping it around to hold the handle out to Raylan. He turned again and got a plate down, setting it beside the plastic takeaway container before pulling his bowl of soup out of the bag, fetching himself a soup spoon from the drawer.

"I only really use that cutlery for company, so may as well keep it wrapped," he said.

From:

tinstar

Raylan's crooked smile spread as Malcolm moves around the kitchen, taking the knife when offered. It was really a shame that he didn't eat like normal people; Raylan could almost imagine him flitting around a kitchen cooking. He raised his eyebrows with an impressed little sound at the plate, eyeing Malcolm with an amused expression as he unwrapped the cutlery and started moving food onto the sturdier to cut on plate.

"I guess that makes sense. You don't get annoyed wrapping it back up after each visit?" He expected that Malcolm had plenty of company through such a sweet little loft. "No girlfriends to keep it unwrapped on a more permanent basis?"

Once the broccoli was off the tray, Raylan got off his stool to find the trash and throw it away before returning to his seat and starting to cut many a bite off his steak.

From:

abrightboy

He couldn't help a small bark of a laugh.

"Um, no visitors. No. No girlfriends. You're the first person that's used it since I moved back here, actually." He made a vague sort of gesture around the loft. "Anyone who gets past the general weirdness tends to be put off by the screaming nightmares," he pointed out, taking the lid off his soup.

From:

tinstar

That got Raylan's eyebrows back up near his hairline again and a purely southern sound of surprised interest.

"It's not so bad. Might need a few ear plugs. Though waking you up still seems like the better idea. Even if it ends in a little wrestling." He pointedly ignored how often that particular memory rose to the surface.

Raylan popped the first bite of steak in his mouth, face pinching in appreciation with a little groan and a bob of his head before he started nodding. "This.. This is what I needed, mmhm." Another bite was hastily popped into his mouth, with another nod in affirmation before he wiped his fingers off on the napkin and picked up another file. "You're gonna let me pay you back for this, right?"

From:

abrightboy

"Oh, I...I don't recommend waking me up if I'm not running for the stairs," he said, though he ducked his head under the weight of a small smile. "It's not safe. For you." He tilted his head towards the bed. "The restraints keep me safe. But when I'm in the middle of a night terror I won't know who you are or where I am..." He glanced over at Raylan. ”I'm not sure wrestling works every time."

He took a small bite of soup. Once he was reasonably sure it would stay down, he took a bigger bite.

From:

tinstar

"Considering that you snapped outta the last ones, I'm not sure they keep anyone safe. Trust me Malcolm, I've dealt with more insanely aware people than you. You're not going to hurt me," Raylan assured with a gentle pull and many wrinkles of his smile, just as happy to see Malcolm eating with him than not.

"Tougher breed than most, out in Harlan."

From:

abrightboy

"I'm more afraid of..." He opened his mouth, then closed it, then glanced at Raylan, then looked at his spoon poking at his soup. "Of me, than anything else," he admitted. "If I did hurt you... I couldn't really... be okay with that."

From:

tinstar

"Hurting people on accident is a way of life," he offered. "If we all maryterd ourselves for things we couldn't help, I'd'va been hung a long time ago. If I don't blame ya, you can't blame yourself, that's the rules." Protested the man that only knew things from his point of view.

"You've warned me, anything I do from here is on me," he finished as he cut into the potato. "Listening to you thrash isn't a pleasant experience; it saves my ears and your throat." Matter of fact, like the change of the seasons.

From:

abrightboy

He chewed on that for a moment, pressing his lips together before looking over at Raylan.

"I've never had anyone tell me straight up they were ignoring the 'stay away from Bright's bed while he's in it' ground rules," Malcolm said. A beat. "Not... that there's been a very large data pool for comparison," he admitted, "but that makes me sound like a loser." He took a bite of soup, then pointed his spoon towards Raylan. "Okay. We'll try it your way."

From:

tinstar

"Art would say ignoring rules is my best feature," he replied with a wry, self deprecating twist of his lips, nodding again. "And hey, you can have a healthy little black book without people being in your bed. It ain't strictly necessary."

But there was satisfaction in the lack of argument and Raylan hoped that he didn't have to break the rule too often.

"So," he said, cheek full of food that he worked as he wiped his fingers clean and opened another file. "What else do you wanna know about our guy?"

From:

abrightboy

Bright's black book, anemic as it was, had been discarded with his life in D.C., but he wasn't going to admit that to a cowboy. He seemed like the kind that would have people throwing themselves into his black book, as it were.

He cleared his throat and glanced around at the files like he had to remind himself where his train of thought was.

"Right. Orphan. So Sol was his father figure first, but didn't really understand him. He nurtured Quarles' thirst for violence but not his darker urges. That's why he's turned to a more... accepting mentor. So how can we narrow this down more? We're definitely looking for someone whose crimes were excessively violent or excessively sadistic. Probably a narcissist; I doubt he's encouraging Quarles out of boredom so much as Quarles' admiration stokes his ego. He considers himself a master of his craft and passing on his knowledge to someone lets him feel like he's still doing his work in the world, despite incarceration. It's also possible he has children that have shunned him due to the nature of his crimes and Quarles is acting as a sort of surrogate for his desire to pass on his trade to his offspring."

Malcolm took a distracted bite of soup.

"It's not just that Quarles wrote to this person but that this person answered. What he's getting out of it is just as important as what Quarles is getting out of it, because that will tell us how to leverage him to give up Quarles. Or whether we can. There's no point in finding this mentor if it won't help us track down Quarles."

From:

tinstar

A lotta people had tried to throw themselves into Raylan's little black book but for all their efforts, it was still frighteningly.. Well, empty. Even Winona wasn't in there anymore; he'd fucked that up so badly she excused herself from giving him yet another chance. It wasn't a fact he wanted to exactly advertise.

Listening, he stabbed another bite, discarded another file and opened a new one.

"Sol didn't like his passions takin' over the propriety of his position. Got a reputation to uphold and all." Quarles definitely stained and endangered all of Sol's business, once that kind of information gets out.

"Dad of the year," Raylan quips. "Any chance we can lean on this guy and pressure Quarles into sticking his head out? Would he try to defend him?"

From:

abrightboy

Malcolm sat up a little straighter as that thought caught him off-guard. It was a point of view he hadn't considered.

"...If he's proud of that connection.... he might," Malcolm admitted. He did have a parallel he could draw on: he'd defend Gil, the father figure that wasn't his actual father. He put his spoon down in his bowl. "He expressed an interest in seeing this mentor, too. He told his friend that he wanted to meet him, but didn't know how to manage it. Another possibility would be laying a trap, though I don't know how we'd create a scenario that made it not suspicious for him to have an easy opportunity to meet someone in maximum security confinement."

From:

tinstar

"If we can get something to pressure the mentor, we might be able to get him to reach out to Quarles, assuming Quarles hasn't reached out first by then. There's only one way to see the guy so if we control that - get the guards to keep us in the loop, an eye on the visit requests.."

Raylan bobbed his eyebrows with his head. Wasn't a bad idea, something to keep in their pockets, if they could find the guy in question.

"How many prisons check the ID they're given for validity or check the wanted lists?"

From:

abrightboy

"That's a good question. I only..." His phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket, expecting it to maybe be Gil or Ainsley or Dani or his mother... the caller ID said Claremont Psychiatric. He took a deep breath, then got up from his stool at the counter.

"Excuse me," he told Raylan politely, then stepped away towards the bedroom, though it wasn't like there were walls to prevent his conversation from being overheard.

"What?" was all he said when he picked up the call. It didn't fit with Malcolm's typically polite demeanour and might give Raylan a clue. After a moment listening, he replied "I can't talk right now. I'm busy." Another pause. "No, I'm not on a date," he said with exasperation. "I'm working." A sigh. "I don't need your help. I've got it." Pause. "No." Pause. "I don't know." Pause. "I have to go." Pause. "I have to go." And he hung up, turning and walking back towards the kitchen. "Sorry about that," he told Raylan, sliding the phone back into his pocket. He got back on his stool and picked up his spoon to poke at his soup with one hand as he reached for a file with the other.

From:

tinstar

Raylan's eyes swept back over at Malcolm's deep breath, watching the lean man walk away and completely ear hustling from his position. He didn't know Malcolm that well, but that was the first time he'd heard Malcolm use that kind of tone.

"Something important?" he questioned innocently. "That sounded.. tense."

From:

abrightboy

Malcolm huffed out a sound that was almost a laugh and he let go of his spoon to clench his right hand on the counter next to his bowl.

"Uh. It was my father." He pressed his lips together and then turned a wry smile on Raylan. "Speaking of raging narcissistic psychopaths." He flexed his hand and clenched it again. "He likes to check in. For some reason he's allowed to make phone calls." His tone suggested neither of these things pleased him to report.

From:

tinstar

Raylan had thought about what Malcolm had told him in Arlo's kitchen that month or two ago, perhaps little more often than he should have, and his eyebrows crept back down into a carefully constructed look as Malcolm clenched his fist again.

"There's nothing stopping you from not answering." He paused, just as carefully choosing his tone. "Why do you?"

He was no profiler, but he had a sense it came back to that core trauma. Malcolm couldn't let his father go, because he'd loved him. Loves him. Not Raylan's place to say, but he still had to ask.

From:

abrightboy

"Sometimes I don't," Malcolm said easily. "And sometimes when I don't, he leaves me 28 voicemails in a day. But..." He shrugged a shoulder and then flexed and clenched his hand again. "It's more complicated than that. I mean... I suppose I want to understand. How someone can be what he is. How he fooled us all." He looked over at Raylan. "He was a great dad, you know. Until he wasn't. And it was just..." He snapped his fingers with his left hand, his right still tightly clenched. "It changed just like that. One moment it was all bedtime stories and games and he was my hero who went to work every day to save lives and the next it was a woman shoved in a box and chloroform and gaslighting and murder." Malcolm levelled his gaze at Raylan. "He didn't just kill people; he tortured them to death because it tickled him. That's the real him and that's what I've told myself since the night I called the police, but the really scary thought is what if he's both?"

From:

tinstar

The Marshal let a half moment of silence linger between them, holding Malcolm's gaze. He killed people, and was a father; would his daughter have to ask the same question of him some day? Yeah, he didn't torture 23 people, but still.

"It's possible. Doesn't make it an excuse." The 'but' was implied and Raylan stabbed another piece of meat to pop in his mouth. "I'm sure you've seen just as many other examples of it as I have. Our parents were people before we were around; we're an interruption to that."

He paused again. "Why's that bother you so much?"

From:

abrightboy

He had to think about that.

"I guess... because I trusted him and he tried to make me complicit in his crimes. And they were horrible. ...And because I trusted him, so I didn't see it sooner." He tilted his head in concession. "I could have saved more people," he admitted, his posture and his tone laced with guilt.